Thursday, April 24, 2014

More political news

Short health update: Thursday morning, April 24, I had blood
work, a chest x-ray and a clinic appointment. The doctor concluded that the
infection is cleared up and took me off the home IV antibiotics (yea!). There
is a tiny spot in the lung that may be the last vestiges of it, which should
clear up, but they will watch in case it is something else, probably with
another x-ray and CT scan in two weeks. Meanwhile, my oxygen is staying in the
safe range running only 2 lpm walking around, which is a great improvement. The
back pain from muscle spasms when I cough is down to "seriously annoying
but tolerable" from the "confess to war crimes" level it was
over the weekend, but I'm babying it. Breathing still labored with activity,
but not due to lack of O2. Surgical bronchoscopy Monday, April 28, to debride
more slough and to remove the stent. How it goes after that will be an
indication of my chances. So I continue to march. ~Bob

Excerpt: Russia
will respond if its interests in Ukraine are attacked, Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov has said, drawing a parallel
with the 2008 Georgian war. Speaking to Russian state TV
channel RT, Mr Lavrov also accused the US
of "running the show" in Ukraine. And in a statement, Russia's foreign ministry repeated its call for Ukraine to
withdraw military units from the country's east. (So, Barack, how's that
"reset" of foreign policy with Russia going? Better get the 1980s
on the phone, see if you can borrow that foreign policy you sneered at in 2012.
~Bob)

Excerpt: Liberals can be disarming. In fact, they are for
disarming anybody who can be disarmed, whether domestically or internationally.
Unfortunately, the people who are the easiest to disarm are the ones who are
the most peaceful -- and disarming them makes them vulnerable to those who are
the least peaceful. We are currently getting a painful demonstration of that in
Ukraine.

U.S. sends 600 troops
to Poland, Baltics in message to Russia
over Ukraine

Excerpt: In a move to reassure Russia’s
neighbors, the United States
will send some 600 paratroopers to Poland
and the Baltics starting tomorrow as part of an open-ended military commitment
prompted by Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. (The
masters of euphuisms in the Obama administration changed it from "The War
on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operations." Now, maybe it
should be, "Speed Bump Bluff Operations." How'd you like to be one of
600 troopers in the path of a Russian Guards Division? ~Bob)

Excerpt: The rise of single-parent families over the last 50
years is the strongest correlate of inequality in the United States, yet few politicians and
researchers will even address the issue when they talk about inequality, say
Robert Maranto, a professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and researcher Michael Crouch.
The United States
has seen a rapid decline in the traditional two-parent family: In 1960, more
than 76 percent of African-Americans and almost 97 percent of whites were born
to married couples. Today, only 30 percent of black children are born to
married couples. For white children, that figure is 70 percent. Hispanics had
an out-of-wedlock birthrate of more than 50 percent in 2006. With
out-of-wedlock births and high divorce rates, one quarter of American children
live in single-parent homes. This is twice the rate in Europe.
...Just 2 percent of children raised in two-parent families experience poverty
long-term, while more than 20 percent of children in single-parent families
live in long-term poverty. PennState sociologist Molly
Martin estimated in 2006 that 41 percent of economic inequality generated
between 1976 and 2000 was the result of changed family structure. According to
researchers at the Brookings Institution, the U.S.
poverty rate would be a full 25 percent lower today if the U.S. family structure resembled
that of 1970.

Excerpt: Income inequality has long been one of the
liberals' favorite issues. So there is nothing surprising about its being
pushed hard this election year. If nothing else, it is a much-needed distraction
from the disasters of ObamaCare and the various IRS, Benghazi and other Obama administration
scandals. Like so many other favorite liberal issues, income inequality is
seldom discussed in terms of the actual consequences of liberal policies. When
you turn from eloquent rhetoric to hard facts, the hardest of those facts is
that income inequality has actually increased during five years of Barack
Obama's leftist policies.

Cliven Bundy Under
Fire for ‘Negro’ Comments, Wondering Whether Blacks Would Be ‘Better Off as
Slaves, Picking Cotton’

Excerpt: “And because they were basically on government
subsidy, so now what do they do?” he continued. “They abort their young
children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to
pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking
cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under
government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Excerpt: The family of the 18-year-old man told police a
letter sent to their home in Stoughton
included a photo showing two men hanging from a tree, with his picture
superimposed onto one of the men, according to a posting on the newspaper's
website.

Excerpt: But as Annaly Lopez' story demonstrates, charters
are chipping away at the two-tiered system that already exists by providing
parents a way around the greatest injustice of urban education, which is that
the quality of a child's school is often determined by where her parents can
afford to live. Unlike traditional public schools, charters don't discriminate
by address, so they provide opportunities for students like Renee to have the
same high quality education as rich kids. (Because it's not about the kids.
It's about power and money which comes from votes, and the teachers' unions
supply votes to fight charters in their own economic interests, to hell with
the kids. ~Bob)

Excerpt: A recent New York Times editorial,
authored by an academic student, says that Vietnam Veterans are behind white
supremacist groups, ostensibly due to their military training. Such an
editorial was a poorly disguised, and poorly researched, attempt at hiding a
political agenda behind academia. The author focused on a few bad Veterans in
the op-ed,
but missed the overall picture of the millions of honorable Vietnam Veterans. Vietnam
Veterans are honorable heroes and they served us well. They fought and won a
war that the politicians lost.

Excerpt: Never let it be said that pity is not profitable. No
where is this more evident than with the ultra-liberal Gannett Company. For
those of you whom the name Gannett doesn't ring a bell, this is the media giant
that produced America's
first "cartoon newspaper", USA TODAY. Last year Gannett made
$2.2 billion dollars. They own some 600 newspapers and print publications
across the nation as well as dozens of TV stations. And they have done more for
liberal socialism than any politician could ever hope to do. You see, Gannett
deals in pity. They use the monstrous power of their media foot print to
publish a very narrow swath of news coverage that champions big government
power and the great crusading for "victimhood". And when the facts
get in the way, they just print the myth, as long as it complies with their
editorial position.

Worth Reading:
When Government Looks More Like Foe than Friend. By Ben S. Carson

And if you disagree with Dr. Carson, you're a racist! ~Bob)Excerpt:
It is quite interesting to see, though, that those same bureaucrats refuse to
enforce some of our federal border-protection laws and other domestic policies
with which they disagree. Perhaps Reid's time could be better spent explaining
why it is acceptable for the federal government to pick and choose which laws
it wishes to enforce. The senator readily referred to the Bundys and their
supporters as "domestic terrorists," but the current administration
is reticent about applying the same term to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who
admitted slaughtering more than a dozen people in 2009 at FortHood in Texas. What does this tell us about our
government and its perceptions and alignments?

Political
Competition, Not Racism, Changes Voter Alignments. By Michael Barone

Excerpt: You can find a more nuanced and thoughtful analysis
in Jonathan Chait's recent New York
magazine article, "The Color of His Presidency." Chait, a liberal,
starts off by noting that the post-racial America that Obama seemed to promise
in his 2004 national convention speech and his 2008 campaign has not come into
being. On the contrary, "Race, always the deepest and most volatile fault
line in American history," he writes, "has now become the primal
grievance in our politics, the source of a narrative of persecution each side
uses to make sense of the world." Many liberals see racism in every
criticism of the Obama presidency, even though, as Chait points out, Bill
Clinton met with similar and in some cases more strident opposition.

Worth Reading
from the Left: The Color of His Presidency. By Jonathon Chait

Excerpt: A different, unexpected racial argument has taken
shape. Race, always the deepest and most volatile fault line in American
history, has now become the primal grievance in our politics, the source of a
narrative of persecution each side uses to make sense of the world. Liberals
dwell in a world of paranoia of a white racism that has seeped out of American
history in the Obama years and lurks everywhere, mostly undetectable.
Conservatives dwell in a paranoia of their own, in which racism is used as a
cudgel to delegitimize their core beliefs. And the horrible thing is that both
of these forms of paranoia are right. . (It's hard to get the full article, but
what you can read is interesting. ~Bob)

Worth Reading:
No One Cares How Many Predictions Earth Day
Founders Got Wrong. By Chriss W. Street

Excerpt: Over the last 44 years Earth Day has often been
hijacked by political opportunists and faux scientists, but it is great fun to
look back and see just
how wrong the original Earth Day environmental experts were about the
science and the future: “Air pollution… is certainly going to take hundreds of
thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Paul Ehrlich, StanfordUniversity biologist. “The world has
been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the
world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in
1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it
would take to put us into an ice age.” Kenneth Watt, Ecologist. “Dr. S. Dillon
Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years,
somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will
be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson. ... “Civilization will end within 15 or 30
years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” George
Wald, Harvard Biologist. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip
whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase
until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during
the next ten years.” Paul Ehrlich. ... “It is already too late to avoid mass
starvation.” Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day.

Excerpt: I get a lot of email from friends (and enemies) of
Eagle Rising, and sometimes I get junk mail too. The other day one of our great
readers sent this awesome joke that should make you and other voters think. It
centers on the wife of Green Bay Packers great Brett Favre. In a news conference
Deanna Favre announced she will be the starting QB for the Packers next season.
Deanna asserts that she is qualified to be the starting QB because she has
spent the past 16 years married to Brett while he played QB for the Packers. I
challenge you to name a single accomplishment from Hillary Clinton that isn’t
personal in nature. From her years as Secretary of State? From her years as a
Senator from New York?
Even her time as a simple lawyer… remember why she got fired from the Watergate investigation?
Her employer, Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat said, “Because she was a
liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the
Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules
of confidentiality.

Worth Watching: This ad from GOP Senate candidate
Monica Wehby will make you cry

Excerpt: Monica
Wehby, a pediatric neurosurgeon running for the U.S. Senate in Oregon,
has released a new ad that will make you shed a tear. The ad,
"Trust," features Lexi Liebelt, a woman who, when she was 21-weeks
pregnant, was told by her doctor that her pregnancy needed to be aborted due to
problems with the spinal cord. “The world stopped,” Liebelt says over sad
music.

Excerpt: The U.S.
is stockpiling the most crude in more than eight decades, thanks to the shale
boom. Inventories rose 3.52 million barrels last week to 397.7 million barrels,
the highest level since 1931, according to the Energy Information
Administration. U.S.
production has surged as the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, unlocked supplies trapped in shale formations in the
central U.S., including the
Bakken in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford
in Texas.

Excerpt: April 23rd is England's
unofficial national holiday - unofficial because, under Blairite devolution, Scotland, Wales,
Northern Ireland and
selected Muslim neighborhoods of Greater London, Yorkshire and the Midlands are all nations, but English nationalism is a
dark demon that must never be loosed upon the land. At the turn of the century,
Tony Blair's ministry was gung-ho for Celtic nationalism and parliaments in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, but for England all the government was
prepared to offer was a subdivision into artificial regions that commanded no
loyalty and could therefore be safely entrusted with "regional
assemblies". Even this was abandoned, and in the years after 9/11 English
nationalism was further complicated by the fact that, unlike St Andrew, St
Patrick and St David, the patron saint of England had a starring role in the
new clash of civilizations: St George's was the crusader cross, the banner
England's soldiers took across a continent to reclaim Jerusalem for
Christendom.

Excerpt: The BLM is apparently
considering whether or not to federalize some 90,000 acres of land on theTexasside of the Red River separatingTexasandOklahoma. The BLM says that in
1986, the feds successfully grabbed some
140 acres of land in that area and therefore has the precedent to grab 90,000
more acres. ...The federal government already controls broad swaths of land in
most Western states, including nearly 85 percent ofNevada,
70 percent ofAlaska,
and 60 percent ofUtah.

Americans take electricity for granted. It powers our lights,
our computers, our offices, and our industries. But misguided environmental
policies are eroding the reliability of our power system.... Environmental policies established by Congress and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are moving us toward electrical grid
failure.

A group called the Citizens Commission on Benghazi has come
out with a damning report on events and decisions that led up to
the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead..... The
commission also says that Islamists attacked the US facility in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, not
intending to kill US Ambassador Christopher Steven, but to kidnap him. The
attackers intended to grab him and use him to bargain for the release of “Blind
Sheikh” Omar Abdul Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 attack on the WorldTradeCenter in New York. (What I said all along. Muslim
Brotherhood had visas and lunch at White House petitioning for release of Blind
Sheik in months prior to attempt. Obviously with blessing of all agencies and
all in power. They did not anticipate radical Islam's hatred of gays, which
press would prefer to downplay. --Barb)

Excerpt: Torquemada has landed in America. This nation of free and
open inquiry has been seized by totalitarians who refuse to entertain other
points of view. The debate about global warming is over say adherents of this
position. When, if ever, has the debate about any scientific issue been over?

Good News: IRS Pays $1 Million in Bonuses to Employees Who
Owe Back Taxes. By Guy Benson

Excerpt: The Internal Revenue Service has paid more
than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems,
including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator
said Tuesday. (Guess they weren't Tea Party members. ~Bob)

Excerpt: A crosscheck of voter rolls in Virginia and Maryland turned up 44,000 people
registered in both states, a vote-integrity
group reported Wednesday. And that’s just the beginning. “The Virginia Voters
Alliance is investigating how to identify voters who are
registered and vote in Virginia but live
in the states that surround us,” Alliance President Reagan George told the
State Board of Elections.

Excerpt: Recently, Barack Obama – a Demosthenes determined
to elevate our politics from coarseness to elegance; a Pericles sent to
ameliorate our rhetorical impoverishment – spoke at the University of Michigan.
He came to that very friendly venue – in 2012, he received 67 percent of the
vote in Ann Arbor's
county – after visiting a local sandwich shop, where a muse must have whispered
in the presidential ear. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had recently released his
budget, so Obama expressed his disapproval by calling it, for the benefit of
his academic audience, a “meanwich” and a “stink burger.” Try to imagine Franklin
Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan talking like
that. It is unimaginable that those grown-ups would resort to japes that
fourth-graders would not consider sufficiently clever for use on a playground.

Excerpt: Their findings challenge the notion that class
structure in the United States
is rigid and unchanging: Twelve percent of the U.S. population will move into the
top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. Thirty-nine
percent of Americans will spend at least one year in the top 5 percent, 56
percent of Americans in the top 10 percent, and 73 percent of Americans will
spend at least one year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.

Only 0.6 percent of the U.S. population will spend 10
consecutive years in the top 1 percent of the income distribution. In short,
Rank and Hirschl found that the public perception of a "static" 1
percent -- and a static 99 percent -- is at odds with reality. And, they found
that income movement goes both ways -- not only will most Americans experience
at least one year of affluence, but 54 percent of Americans will also
experience poverty or near poverty at least once. Other studies confirm these
results. An IRS study of the top 400 American taxpayers between 1992 and 2009
found that only 2 percent of those on the list were on it for at least 10
years.

Show me our shocked face. ~Bob. Excerpt: The top watchdog
for the Department of Homeland Security altered and
delayed investigations at the request of senior administration officials,
compromising his independent role as an inspector general, according to a new report from
a Senate oversight panel. Charles K. Edwards, who served as acting DHS
inspector general from 2011 through 2013, routinely shared drinks and dinner
with department leaders and gave them inside information about the timing and
findings of investigations, according to the report from an oversight panel of
the Homeland Security
and Government Operations Committee. A year-long bipartisan
investigation by the panel also found that Edwards improperly relied on the
advice of top political advisers to then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and
acquiesced to their suggestions about the wording and timing of three separate
reports.

Excerpt: I just received a forwarded email from an old
marine who was mourning the death of one of his old comrades from the Army of
The Republic of Vietnam. I too mourned the death because I know of the
heartbreak of millions of ARVN troops who lived lives of quiet desperation
after the North Vietnamese Communists took over that country in 1975. My
Vietnamese brother-in-law fought for his country, right along side we
Americans. When the war was declared over, and we all came home, the war for
our Vietnamese allies would continue. My brother-in-law was stripped of his
South Vietnamese uniform and shipped off to a Vietnamese "re-education
camp". There he was tortured, fed slop that a hog wouldn't eat, beaten
repeatedly, and when they had defeated his spirit completely, they sent him
home to die. And this he did...he died painfully and at a painfully young age. His
crime; fighting for his country.

"The most transparent administration in history"
hides the numbers. Again. You can subscribe to this blog at ncpa.org for free.
~Bob Excerpt: The new announcement that the Census Bureau is completely
changing its Current Population Survey (CPS) questions about health insurance
coverage (see previous post here) is
devastating for those of us who do health research. We have all known for years
— decades — that the CPS count of the insured isn’t especially accurate. The
questions it asks are about full-year coverage but people tend to answer based
on their current status. It chronically under-reports Medicaid enrollment — the
actual head count from Medicaid programs is always higher than indicated in the
survey. The same is probably true for employment-based coverage. It has often
been criticized for being weak on foreign language questions. Massachusetts, for example, has a
significant population of people who speak Portuguese and that state thought
the CPS failed to capture those people. ... But despite all this, the CPS
numbers were very useful. It is an enormous survey of 78,000 households, and
since it also asks about employment and income, it is possible to look at very
detailed demographic categories. The error rate appears to occur throughout the
data, it is not concentrated in any one demographic group, so it is not a
factor in comparing sub-groups.

Excerpt: The United States
can look to Sweden for a
preview of America's health
care future, says Per Bylund, a professor at the Hankamer School of Business at
BaylorUniversity.

Sweden
is routinely praised as an example of a successful socialist country, but its
health care industry suggests something else entirely. While Sweden's
universal health care system is consistently ranked as one of the best
quality-wise, the country has an access problem. Swedish patients face
incredibly long wait times simply to get an appointment with a doctor, even
having to wait for emergency care. Certain procedures have multiyear wait
times, and treatment is sometimes denied altogether. As of 2013, Sweden's
National Board of Health and Welfare reported that the average wait time from initial referral to start of treatment for
"intermediary and high risk" prostate cancer was an incredible 220
days. One 80-year-old Swedish woman recently had to wait four hours before
an ambulance arrived. And no ambulance at all came to a one-month-old infant
who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. This rationing is due to the gap between
the number of people seeking care and the capabilities of health care providers
-- and the United States can expect to see the same results thanks to
ObamaCare.

A GOP Senator filed the lawsuit in January against U.S. Office of
Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta and her department over a
rule allowing members of Congress and their staff members to receive subsidies
for their health care coverage if they chose plans through Obamcare exchanges.
This is a matter that was debated in Congress, and turned down. So an appointed
member of Mr. Obama's Administration is going to just do what they feel like
doing anyhow, which is to insulate people in Congress and their staffs from
feeling the full effects of ObamaCare costs. This is a case of the privileged
not having to live up to the rules they have inflicted on everyone else in the
country. The rules on subsidies in the original ObamaCare package apply to people
with low incomes. No one in Congress or on their staffs qualify for having low
incomes! But Mr. Obama wants them to get taken care of anyway, this is of
course the famous "Chicago
politics." It is an affront to every American that those in Congress and
working there would get subsidies for being on the health care system that no
one else in the country in their income brackets would receive. This is a kind
of payoff, and being done by what is really illegal executive overreach. And we
are supposed to believe that our leaders are really concerned with "social
justice"? --Del

Excerpt: In a world where Lois Lerner continues
to be paid, news that taxpayers will probably be sending Kathleen Sebelius
checks for the rest of her life is hardly surprising: According to the Daily
Caller, in just a few days Sebelius will qualify for a $10,000 per year
pension, plus some nice health care perks — for life.

Excerpt: Cases involving religious details, however, do have
a way of stopping big social legislation, and not only because they violate the
principles of the religious denominations involved. Regardless of the Court’s
decision, even pro-choice Jews, Unitarians, and Muslims may eventually change
their views on the ACA precisely because of Hobby Lobby and cases
like it. (Shales is the author of the excellent biography Coolidge. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Simply put, being a
doctor has become amiserable and humiliating undertaking. Indeed, many
doctors feel that America
has declared war on physicians—and both physicians and patients are the losers.
Not surprisingly, many doctors want out. Medical students opt for high-paying
specialties so they can retire as quickly as possible. Physician MBA programs—that promise
doctors a way into management—are flourishing. The website known as the Drop-Out-Club—which hooks doctors up with jobs at hedge funds
and venture capital firms—has a solid following. In fact, physicians are so
bummed out that 9 out of 10 doctors would discourage anyone from entering
the profession. (As I said when Obamacare passed, we have destroyed the best healthcare
system in the world. i don't think we can get it back. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Now that the ACA has been in effect for a few
months, the unintended consequences of the law are becoming clearer. ... But
not much has been made of the ACA’s effect on the segment of population it was
supposed to help the most: the poor. Little discussed in the thousands of pages
of the ACA bill were its deep cuts to Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH)
payments.

WashingtonState threatens to send Obamacare costs through
the roof. #obamacare. By Moe Lane

Excerpt: There are three major elements to healthcare plan
decisions: Cost: How much does it cost per month or year, just to have it? Deductible:
How much does the consumer have to kick in for any given procedure? Network:
Who is willing to take you on as a patient, if you use that plan? With me so
far? Good. What Obamacare does is turn all of this into a zero-sum game.

New State Rules Could
Limit Cheaper Health Plans With 'Narrow Networks'

Excerpt: The practice of offering relatively inexpensive
health plans with bare-bones provider networks has created tension between
making health care affordable and keeping it accessible. It’s set to come to a
head this week in Olympia.
The growth of “narrow networks” in Washington
comes as the Affordable Care Act limits the ability of insurance companies to
control their costs. That’s made it harder to offer plans at a range of prices
— something the companies want to do as they compete for comparison shoppers on
the health exchanges.

Excerpt: Religious leaders are slamming a documentary to be
shown at the nation's premier 9/11 museum because it might make people believe
Islam was responsible for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Already
the lone imam on an interfaith advisory group to the National September
11 Memorial Museum has quit in protest at the seven-minute documentary.
(The truth is, that none of the Muslim leaders want anything shown or said that
brings together the fact that these men committed an horrendous atrocity, and
that they were motivated by religious fanaticism. Muslim sensitivity has been
raised to tremendous heights, and there is no way to factually treat 9/11
without upsetting at least some of them. And I don't mean to be unfeeling, but
the real answer is "get over it". Islamism and jihadism are part of
Islam, just as fanatics have been part of Christianity and other religions, and
there's no use in trying to act as if this association doesn't exist. When IRA
fanatics were blowing up innocent people in Northern
Ireland and England, Catholics could not deny
that they were Catholics, extremists not living up to the tenets of the Faith,
but still associated with the religion. Everybody knew it wasn't all Catholics,
and everybody has heard ad infinitum that it isn't all Muslims. To keep making
fervent protests about this doesn't help the image of Muslims. --Del)

Excerpt: The watchdog agency that monitors compliance with
the global chemical weapons treaty said Tuesday it was looking into allegations
that chlorine gas was used in a raid on a Syrian village earlier this month

Excerpt: Two months after the United Nations Security
Council ordered Syria’s
warring parties to allow access for humanitarian aid to civilians, the heads of
five United Nations agencies warned on Wednesday that diplomacy had failed and
that the desperate plight of civilians in many parts of the country was getting
worse. . (Failed? With Hillary and Kerry involved? Color me shocked. Turns out
Barack "Redline" Obama's "Assad must go" policy is now an,
"Assad can keep his health plan" policy. ~Bob)

Excerpt: President Obama is considering ramping up military
support to the Syrian rebels, who are increasingly dominated by
jihadists. American
anti-tank missiles have already appeared in videos in the hands of
rebel forces. According to an April 21st report in Time Magazine,
the White House is now considering sending the rebels shoulder-fired
surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles known as manpads. In the wrong
hands, such missiles could be used to take out commercial aircraft.

Liberals ould not care less bout this real "war on Women."
~Bob). Excerpt: In 2013, as many as 202 women were murdered in the name of
Karo-kari (honour killing) in Sindh, Special Home Secretary Sindh informed the
Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights on Monday. The secretary also
stated that at least 28 honour killing cases have been reported in 2014 thus
far.

Excerpt: A deadly gun battle along the China-Vietnam border
has left seven people dead, including five Chinese migrants and two Vietnamese
border guards. According to local officials, a shootout erupted when Vietnamese
border guards tried to turn back a group of Chinese citizens entering their
country illegally. ... Vietnamese media has reported that the Chinese citizens
were from the far Western Muslim Province
of Xinjiang where human
rights groups say there is persecution of local ethnic Uighurs. (Uighurs are
the Muslim minority that has carried out jihad attacks in China. ~Bob)